The Capitalist Unconscious: From Korean Unification to Transnational Korea

377 Pages·2015·23.56 MB·English

by  Hyun Ok Park

Hyun Ok Park
Capitalist Unconscious
e
h
T
FROM KOREAN UNIFICATION T O
T R A N S N AT I O N A L K O R E A
THE CAPITALIST UNCONSCIOUS

THE CAPITALIST UNCONSCIOUS
FROM KOREAN UNIFICATION TO TRANSNATIONAL KOREA
HYUN OK PARK
columbia university press——New York
columbia university press
publishers since 1893
new york chichester, west sussex
cup.columbia.edu
Copyright © 2015 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
This publication project was supported by the Korea Foundation.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Park, Hyun Ok.
The capitalist unconscious : from Korean unification to transnational Korea /
Hyun Ok Park.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-231-17192-2 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-231-54051-3 (ebook)
1. Korea (South)—Social conditions. 2. Capitalism—Social aspects—Korea
(South) 3. Korea (North)—Social conditions. 4. Socialism—Korea (North)
5. Korean reunification question (1945- ) I. Title.
HN730.5.A8P39 2015
306.3′4209519—dc23
2015010090
Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper.
This book is printed on paper with recycled content.
Printed in the United States of America
c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
cover image: Cho Chonhyun, Footsteps on the Border
cover design: Chang Jae Lee
References to websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing.
Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs
that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
For Michael Burawoy and Harry Harootunian

Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xv
Part I: Crisis 1
1. The Capitalist Unconscious: The Korea Question 3
2. The Aesthetics of Democratic Politics:
Labor, Violence, and Repetition 35
Part II: Reparation 71
3. Reparation: On Colonial Returnee 73
4. Socialist Reparation: On Living Labor 104
5. Chinese Revolution in Repetition: The Minority Question 144
Part III: Peace and Human Rights 181
6. Korean Unification as Capitalist Hegemony 183
7. North Korean Revolution in Repetition: Crisis and Value 218
8. Spectacle of T’albuk: Freedom and Free Labor 250
Conclusion 287
Notes 297
Bibliography 307
Index 339

Preface
Korea is already unified in a transnational form by capital. The prevailing
ability to overlook flows of people, goods, and ideas crossing the borders of
South Korea, China, and North Korea—beyond economic aid and the widely
publicized trail of North Korean refugees—attests to the continued reign of
the Cold War’s legacy and a seemingly undeniable sense of capitalism’s vic-
tory over socialism. Recognition of transnational Korea requires a historical
approach that consigns the current Korean nation formation to the history
of Korea and the Korean diaspora in the twentieth century. The ongoing
transnational interaction of Koreans is constituted by asynchronous adop-
tion of neoliberal reforms in Korean communities, each of which imagines
them as a new democratic order. The Capitalist Unconscious presents the post-
colonial and Cold War history of socialism and capitalism as the history of
the neoliberal present. During the Cold War, rivalry between the two Koreas
contrived their territorial integration as the normative vision of Korean eth-
nic and national sovereignty. Despite the tenacity of this Cold War formula,
the current capitalist and democratic integration of Koreans across borders
has once again destabilized ethnic and national relations of Koreans, which
have been a vortex of the Asian order ever since the large-scale migration of
Koreans to Manchuria (northeast China) and neighboring countries from
Japanese rule. In turn, the unfolding disagreements over the identity and
rights of border-crossing Koreans within each community and across them
expose the unevenness and disjuncture of the current capitalist expansion
on a global scale, which each Korean community construes as a transition
from socialism to capitalism or from military dictatorship to democracy.